Belonging Essay Emily Dickinson and Anna Karenina

Good Morning Year 12 and teachers. Within Emily Dickinson’s Romantic poems ‘I had been hungry all the years’ and ‘I gave myself to him’ and Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina, the authors recognize differing sides of social isolation and the social and personal contexts of the authors and characters, which shape the character’s isolation. In both texts the characters’ happiness is contingent on whether the choice is conscious or not. This in turn has shaped my understanding of the perplexing concept of belonging.

Both authors present isolated female protagonists. They show how society has strong expectations of women, which ultimately in these texts lead to their isolation. Emily Dickinson’s isolation is a result of her decision not to conform to the Puritan society’s values.

Dickinson’s poem ‘I gave myself to him’ highlights the strong expectations of her patriarchal Puritan society. Marriage was seen as the only option for women in 19th-century America, The declamatory tone of the opening line “I gave myself to him” signifies the persona’s surrendering of her personal identity to conform to social expectations of females. Despite extensive use of first person in her poetry, Dickinson remains independent of the persona in this poem. Dickinson’s sense of self is built around her identity as a spinster and non-conformist, while the persona exhibits a retrospective regret about her role as a submissive wife.

The economic jargon such as “debt”, “owe”, “insolvent” and “depreciate” connotes an extended financial metaphor. This jargon, which likens marriage to a business contract, suggests marriage is devoid of love. The persona finds herself traded like a commodity with the “solemn contract of a life”. The persona ultimately ends up in solitude after “paying the sweet debt of life each night to owe/ insolvent every noon”. This is paralleled by Dickinson’s choice not to marry. She does not conform to her Puritan society and remains content unlike the persona...